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Inspiring
November 20, 2024
Open for Voting

Guide Layer for Premiere

  • November 20, 2024
  • 10 replies
  • 1290 views

In After Effects you can turn a layer into a Guide Layer, whereby when you export the layer is ommited

It would be great to have this feature in Premiere

I guess it woul dbe called Guide Track

10 replies

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 11, 2025

@thepixelsmith 

 

Regular guides work well for safe areas that extend horizontally for the full width of the frame or vertically for the full height.

 

Regular guides don't work so well for graphic elements that are a smaller portion of the picture or that are superimposed later (usually during broadcast) after a package is delivered like ratings bugs, network bugs, show logo bugs, news banners, and snipes.

 

There's also a timing component.  Regular guides run the length of the Timeline while Guide Layers in After Effects can span whatever duration they're needed for and change as often as needed from the program start to program end.  If Guide Clips existed in Premiere Pro, they'd have the same flexibility.

 

Guide Clips could also go directly from Photoshop or Illustrator to a Video Track in a Premiere Pro Timeline.  Regular Photoshop guides have to go through After Effects and regular Illustrator guides have to be redrawn on the Premiere Pro side.  For anyone receiving graphics that represent safe areas from those two applications, Guide Clips would help in Premiere Pro the same way that Guide Layers help in After Effects. 

thepixelsmith
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 11, 2025

In the use case mentioned, for social media frame sizes. 

Couldn't that just be done with regular guides?

Or is there other information you are using for the guide layer other than just dimensions?

Participating Frequently
April 10, 2025

Adding a vote for this.  I normally work this way in AE and rarely work in PR so half the time I forget to hide the track the safety guide is on.  Very frustrating when working with a dated company computer that can takes hours to render.

Inspiring
November 23, 2024

'Guide clip' makes perfect sense, good call!

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 22, 2024

In the same way that having Adjustment Layers in both After Effects and Premiere Pro is very helpful, it would be helpful to have Guide Layers in both as well; however, I'm thinking that it would need to be a "Guide Clip" availalbe under Clip > Set Guide Clip to toggle it on and off.  When enabled, the Clip would be excluded from export in the same way Guide Layers are excluded from renders in AE.

This would be very helful for anyone that has to reference safe areas from a style guide on a regular basis for placing logos or watermarks as well as having a placeholder that never renders on accident.  It's also helpful for notes.

 

Great idea, @ReginaldUser555 


Kes Akalaonu
Inspiring
November 22, 2024

And I understand that with being forced to have to do social media stuff for Black Friday this week. Only issue I see with that is having to sacrifice an entire track for a layer who's purpose is to allow to me line up graphics for social. Maybe the smart play would be to make it an overlay setting in Overlays that is visible during the editing phase but doesn't show up on export. We could import a PNG of the settings we need to hit or it comes with popular settings from Facebook, IG, Tiktok and more.

Inspiring
November 21, 2024

So I don't have to keep hiding and showing the track? I'm not sure I'm being clear.
In After Effects, you can have several guide layers, for example, an overlay of social media frames, that are visible when working, but on export are not included. It's really handy if you have several guide layers.

I find it frustrating when I've forgotten to hie the guide track and it's on the export. Sure, I could try and not forget, but that's not always straght forward when you're wokring late on a deadline with endless client amends

Kes Akalaonu
Inspiring
November 21, 2024

What would be the practical point of it? In After Effects, null objects can control things that are parented to it and not show up on export. You can use a layer as a reference to replicate a similar look if it's a guide layer and it not show up on export. What's stopping you from enabling or disabling an item in the timeline?

Inspiring
November 20, 2024

when you export the layer is ommited

Ann Bens
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 20, 2024

Please explain what a guided layer is: not everybody uses Ae.